


Supernatural 3.10 review

by yourlibrarian



Series: Supernatural Reviews [13]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Review, Episode: s03e10 Dream a Little Dream, Gen, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 10:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30104250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: Originally posted February 8, 2008.
Series: Supernatural Reviews [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2202249
Kudos: 1
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Supernatural 3.10 review

I could almost forgive the mess that was this episode for that one scene we got with Dean. You know which one, of course. But really, given what a tremendous opportunity this idea presented it's like all we got was a mish-mash of different possibilities, none of them particularly well executed, from a writing, directing or editing standpoint. Thank heavens at least the actors didn't let us down.

When watching this for the first time I missed the "Then" segment so I wasn't expecting various things that happened. However just by reviewing it I think one can see the first problem with this episode -– there were entirely too many things being referenced (and I say referenced because hardly any of them were explored).

On the plus side, it's happy-making to see Bobby starting off an episode. However nothing in his dream was as frightening or visually confusing as the room he was staying in. The set designers have often gone over-the-top in the design of the motels but apparently they went straight over the top into the land of color-blindness for this one. Holy Cow, I could hardly pay attention to the people in the scene for the way that wallpaper screamed at me, and the way the artwork did NOT go with the wallpaper made them seem like they were floating in -– well, it was just awful, let's leave it at that. I can't imagine the cinematographer didn't want to throttle someone.

And if it weren't for the horrific room design I'd almost say that Bobby tends to stay in a classier sort of joint than Sam and Dean do –- certainly that maid's outfit was nicer than anything I've ever seen one wear. I'm guessing though that the only reason this episode was set in a hotel instead of the usual motel was because of the wall safe. However I find it mildly hysterical that the wall safe required justification of some kind whereas hardly anything else in the episode made any sense.

So, our eyeballs get a break for a few moments as we move into the bar scene. Now on the one hand, I quite like the bar scene. I liked the way it was shot, I liked the way that it started out with some classic rock (although that money would seem to be totally wasted in this scene), I really liked the tone, I even like the way it was written. The only drawback to this scene is that when you look back on the whole episode and everything it skimmed over, this scene could well have been cut. There's nothing that's covered there that couldn't have been covered in a few lines of dialogue elsewhere, or even needed to be said at all. We already know Sam's giving/given up on saving Dean, we already know Sam's trying to be like Dean (which I'm guessing was the point of Sam saying Dean drinks in bars and picks up women all the time), and we already know Sam wishes Dean would give more of a damn. In fact, I could have sworn we had settled this in the last three episodes when Dean agreed to stop putting up a front (3.07), when Dean admitted he wanted to have a Christmas and make the most of his remaining time (3.08) and Sam told him he was trying to become more like Dean (3.09). In fact the only line of dialogue that's mildly significant is that Dean has apparently not told Sam that Ruby confessed she couldn't help him –- something we wouldn't be wondering about if the show didn't keep having significant information sharing going on offscreen. The only other thing of significance, at least for fic writers, is that this is the second time we've seen Sam getting drunk.

So, they get a call about Bobby and off they go. I have to mention that given their frequent change of phones (the last time we saw it was in 3.07 after all) it's pretty amazing that Bobby still has a current emergency contact number for them with him. But whatever. We get a bit of exposition from the doctor, they go to Bobby's room and discover his case notes. Makes you wonder if he taught John that bulletin-board method of laying out cases or if it was the reverse. Given the age of Bobby's wife one might guess it could have gone either way since Bobby appears to be older than John.

We get one of the more interesting shots of the episode with Dean's entrance into the professor's office (and an amusing reminder of just how tall JA is). What follows though strikes me as odd. I mean, Sam and Dean's impersonations often had to be taken with some suspension of disbelief given how young they seemed for some of the roles they took on. But at least they seemed fairly convincing in their attitudes. Is there some reason Dean has to be so clearly winging it in this and the next scene? I did however have to laugh at the "permanent record" line. I wonder how many times Dean got fed that line in school?

I did think the beer bottle move was a clever touch. It would be rare for Dean to turn down food or drink after all. However for purposes of "ingesting" something from the dreamer, what is it exactly that Jeremy could have ingested? A trace of Dean's spit? Awfully DNA-ish, isn't it? Considering how much of it we get on ourselves, that small a trace could have them dropping into anyone's dream. Ok, whatever.

So Dean's done acid. I'm sure there's going to be some fic about that as well -– seems an odd choice for him as opposed to various other possibilities. And Sam apparently hasn't.

One thing I could have done less with were the number of shots in the episode where Sam and Dean were both in frame and the camera kept switching focus back and forth. It's a distracting sort of shot whenever it's used, but to have it used repeatedly just keeps emphasizing the reduced number of setups they're using.

In any case we have some case exposition, another reminder of what's going on with Bobby, and then Dean points out how they're at the point in the case where they would be calling Bobby for help. On the one hand, I liked that reminder of his role, on the other, it seemed a rather weak excuse to try and go digging in his brain. It's not like the Winchesters were unable to do research before they started relying on Bobby, and it would seem to make more sense for them to do this to actually snap Bobby out of it.

Then we get to the most left-field scene in the whole episode. While I'll go along with the idea that she might have been a good choice for them to get something unusual quickly, Bela really seemed shoehorned into this episode. If it wasn't for the theft of the Colt at the end, which I can only assume in some way will be important in the future, her scenes smacked of a need to fill the actor's contracted appearances. I have to admit I laughed at the whole bit with Sam (it was the drool that really did it), and the odd fanfic aspect to it was entertaining as well. But from a writing standpoint it's almost unforgivable to have that pointless scene when there was so much else to cover here. Canonically there's no reason it couldn't occur. The brain's dream burps are truly random things and I could see Sam behaving so oddly with Bela because he, too, was startled (maybe even appalled) by the random, and even more embarrassed by Dean harping on it. But my first reaction on watching was simply WTF?

We get the moment then when Bela sees where the Colt is. And this is what makes no sense to me. For example in the last episode when Ruby appears on the road, Dean suddenly whips the Colt out, even though that gun is way too big to be carried around easily in a concealed fashion. Yet here the Colt is in a wall safe, making it difficult and time consuming for them to get to. Why not just sleep with it under his pillow and otherwise have it on his person?

Then came the next WTF to me –- Sam and Dean both take the tree root without anyone around to watch over them in case anything goes wrong and neither can wake up either. Bela already offered and Dean already turned her down. Why not have one of them do this alone? This seemed incredibly reckless to me.

It was kind of interesting to see the ultrabright and desaturated looks combined in Bobby's dream, however Sam's time wandering around also seemed kind of pointless. Dean was going to know about Jeremy once they woke up anyway, so Sam's "discovery" isn't really necessary. Again, Dean could have gone under while Sam watched over him and you could have cut half of the scene out. (Side note: is this the house they used in the Magnificent 7? It looked like it. That certainly doesn't seem to be the outside of Bobby's place)

We then get to find out how Bobby got into hunting, apparently he too lost his wife. Of course what's worse is that if she was possessed, all that stabbing shouldn't have done any good. I'm kind of disappointed in this back story. On the one hand, I can see how this shared experience could have given him a bond with John. On the other, did we really have to have another dead wife? Rather like Jeremy's experience, I would have preferred his personal demon to be something other than his father. It's just so repetitive.

Speaking of fathers, Dean states what has become obvious, that Bobby is a father figure to them. It's a curious thing how, in this world that operates so crucially on what people do and don't know, that Sam and Dean have known so little about John or any of John's friends such as Ellen or Bobby. I suppose though that since the Winchesters rarely spoke of Mary's death there might not have been much opportunity for them to know about Bobby's wife either. I got a sudden foreboding feeling about Bobby's fate though. The speech they exchanged as Dean tried to convince Bobby to wake up seemed an echo of Dean's own situation –- Bobby being willing to die for guilt over his wife, and Dean trying to convince him they were family and he had to save himself. That Bobby feels Dean saved his life, and that they had a bonding moment that seemed separate from what Bobby has with Sam, made me wonder if Bobby isn't going to die by the end of this season (or, thanks to the strike, this deal arc). Hmm.

Given the whole Dean-John scene, it seems to me this was a perfect setup to explore Dean and Bobby in earlier scenes. After all if Dean says he's been like a father, he clearly hasn't been like the father he knew. For example, Bobby shares information with him (not a lot, but Dean already saw a lot of the truth for himself) about his life. He praises Dean for having saved him. He lets Dean make his own decisions even when he strongly disagrees with them. And Dean feels comfortable enough to lash out on occasion, even while he's brought up short after doing so. I think the episode could have made much stronger ties between what Dean would have apparently wanted in a father, and what he feels he actually got. Because just as Sam has misjudged John in the past, I daresay Dean has as well -- for the most part we only know John as they see him.

And from the other side, it would be nice to know why Bobby cares so much for the Winchester boys. In fact I'd say Dean in particular. I'm sure Bobby cares for Sam as well (and given Bobby's skills as a researcher, you'd think the two would have more in common). However from what we've seen I'd speculate Bobby cares for Sam as much because he's so important to Dean, as simply for Sam himself.

Thanks to Jared's story in Chicago all I could think of during this next scene is how he was playing with Jim Beaver's toes during all that dialogue. But heh to Dean's admission about the beer, that was wonderfully played.

I did wonder in the next scene if Bela was actually telling the truth about the spirits. You'd think over those 2 days she'd have already had the opportunity to steal the Colt and get gone. So as Bobby asked, why stick around? From what we know of Bela it doesn't seem to make any sense.

But I could hardly think about that, given the next scene. For no discernible reason, Dean pulls over in the middle of nowhere to get Jeremy to come after them. Is there some reason he couldn't have waited to do this until they returned to the hotel? But no, it's out in the middle of nowhere so that they'll give Bobby a terrible time finding them if something goes wrong. And then Sam apparently has been carting around more of the tea in a thermos or something because how did he just happen to have some brewed with him? These guys are hunters, the way they're both completely reckless and unplanned in everything they do? ::throws up hands::

It was nice to see Lisa again, and fitting that Dean's dreams are the very opposite of his daily life. Unfortunately this was a case where a moment was lost. When Dean tells Sam "Stop looking at me like that" we only wish we could see how Sam was looking, given that this is another of those focus-refocus-focus shots and the camera keeps transitioning between the two. I will say that this scene is probably the only justification I can see for Sam's Bela dream in the episode –- the fact that the two brothers dream about the opposite of their daily lives (and perhaps even their true natures). I'm also thinking that the irony of Dean's dream with Lisa is that I would call that yet another legacy of John's. Surely that was _his_ dream -- to be able to return to a domestic life with Mary and the kids.

Finally we get to the truly interesting part of the episode. And by that I mean wondering who the dream Dean actually is. Since in the scene Dean says he can snap his fingers and wake up, yet he doesn't, and at the end of the episode Demon-Dean snaps his fingers (and presumably we -- and Sam and Dean -- do). So I'm not sure if the rest of the episode wasn't Dean still dreaming (and given next week's preview, maybe Sam is still dreaming too. That would really be an interesting arc idea –- two episodes that are actually all dreams). I'm assuming that the Dean in the room is Dean's subconscious self. It seemed to me the whole point of this was to reintegrate Dean in a way he hasn't been since before John and Sam's deaths –- that after that point he was unable to cope with the loss of the people who defined him and the increasing loss of control he had over his own life. Which would explain why the terror of losing his identity and becoming a demon would be the final straw for him. After all, Ruby told him he would forget what he was. The question for Dean is, what is he now? What is it that he would be forgetting?

What's also interesting is what's reiterated about why Dean made the deal in the first place. I'd always thought that deal was about John more than Sam. Not that Dean didn't want Sam back desperately, but that what was driving Dean there was guilt and a sense of failure –- something that, as he says here, John passed on to him like so many other things. It was his father's voice he heard in his head, telling him to follow in his footsteps and do whatever was necessary to save Sam, even at the most bitter cost to himself.

What gets particularly confusing here is the way this scene and the one with Sam and Jeremy are edited together. Maybe it's because the scenes have a similar dark background, maybe it's just poorly timed cuts, but I found it hard to follow at the end. I'm gathering that Sam actually killed Jeremy with the baseball bat but that's left pretty unclear. Can one actually be killed in a dream? If so then Dean should have killed himself with that shotgun blast. It seemed to leave the ending of this pretty open –- how could Sam be certain Jeremy was dead? I'm just thinking that Sam had no way of knowing if he'd simply hurt Jeremy or if it he'd actually killed him because presumably at the moment of Jeremy's death they both popped out of the dream. Except supposedly it should have been Dean who got them out of the dream. After all Dean kept trying to get Bobby to wake up, and once he did they all woke. So why did Sam killing Jeremy end _Dean_ 's dream? That was really ambiguous to me, perhaps because they didn't want to emphasize what Sam actually did. It's true he was acting in self-defense, however Jeremy is not only human but not exactly the worst villain they've ever run into. I interpreted the view of Jeremy as a drug addict being willing to do anything for his next fix. While that led him to murder, really it seemed he just wanted to be left alone.

Which leads me to another question of why Bobby was hunting him in the first place. From what we know, Jeremy killed the doctor but wasn't bothering anyone else, and all there was to go on was an obit about a man who wouldn't wake up and then died in his sleep. That hardly seems like the sort of thing that would get Bobby heading across country to look into. As Dean himself said, "What the hell is Bobby doing in Pittsburgh?"

I'm not clear why Bobby would have wondered about Sam's ability to take over the dream since there wasn't apparently anything unusual about Jeremy, who relied on the root as well. But that Jeremy just so happened to be taking the root when Dean went to sleep -- well, ok, whatever. I guess this scene was inserted for the sole purpose of keeping the "Is Sam Evil" storyline going.

Also, with the next episode supposedly being about hunting down Bela and the Colt, I'm wondering if Bela's story about entering the hunting world isn't going to turn out to be much like Bobby's. Maybe she wants it for herself, to kill the demon who took over someone she knows (maybe the mysterious family member).

Finally we have the rather ambiguous ending of Dean asking Sam to save him, and then Demon!Dean saying it isn't possible and dream Dean snapping his fingers to leave the dream. I'm not really sure what we're supposed to make of the ending and the editing didn't help.

As I said at the start, this episode set out to do far too much and didn't end up doing very much of it well. We have a Bela storyline starting with the Colt (and maybe with Sam, who knows at this point). We have a little insight into Bobby's background but precious little if you ask me. I have to admit that having us go into Bobby's, Sam's and Dean's psyche all in one episode would probably have just been too much and fairly confusing to the casual viewer. Given the weak editing job here and the not-stellar blocking and filming choices made, it would probably also have been incoherent. But it seems to me this is an episode where we could have had Sam taking even more of a backseat and foregrounded Dean and Bobby, both their relationship to one another, as well as Bobby's background and Dean's own psychic fragmentation. That would have been more than enough for this episode (along with the whole villain-of-the-week plotline). I'm really sorry the opportunity was squandered in this way.

BTW, kind of amusing that Lawrence, KS ranked 7th in Forbes' list of America's smartest cities. By comparison, the closest city to Stanford was San Jose, ranked 16th. Maybe Sam should go home again.


End file.
